


A Woman of No Consequence

by ProwlingThunder



Series: The Everlasting List of Shenanigans [211]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Always-a-girl!Ardyn, Childbirth, Female!Ardyn, Gen, Genderbending, Motherhood, Spoilers, Starscourge, Wrongful Imprisonment, asexual reproduction, pre-game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-13
Updated: 2018-03-13
Packaged: 2019-03-30 18:31:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13957482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProwlingThunder/pseuds/ProwlingThunder
Summary: There wereconsequencesto healing the Starscourge her way.





	A Woman of No Consequence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BlackJacketsandPens](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackJacketsandPens/gifts).



> Genderbending Prompt: do genderflip ardyn????  
> 100+ Words Meme

There were _consequences_ to healing the Starscourge her way. She knew that there would be, but she thought it would be because of how dangerous the illness was, and she lives in denial the first several months, trying to pretend she's not starving for food, pretending not to notice the way her friends cut their own portions down, bit by bit, to make sure she has a little more. She tries not to notice the way her trousers tighten until they have to be let out entirely.

"Ardyn," Gilgamesh starts, and the way he says her name isn't reproach, it's too soft and gentle, tinged with self-loathing because if this is what she thinks it is, what he thinks it is, then he has failed something awful, hasn't he?

He no sooner says her name than she bursts into tears and drags him in close, desperate for contact, for closeness. She didn't think anything of it, the first missed moonsblood, and she's not _sure_ sure, yet, but what else could it be? What else?

(When she calms down, she reassures him it's not his fault. Whatever this is, it's divined by the Six; her body is still as pure as it was when they set out, she's lain with no-one and no one has taken her. It's not a lie and it eases some of the grief in his eye but saying it out loud only goes to prove how many questions it leaves behind.)

 

"Should you really be healing in your condition?" a man asks her, a few short months later, and the (babe? monster?) being in her belly stirs, kicks at her ribs, tickles the lining of her womb. The activity makes her fingers shaky, but the little one is always active when she heals, draws the Scourge out of her people like a blotting cloth. It's only these last few weeks that the hypothesis has arrived that maybe the healing is the cause of her condition, and that's only because the _condition_ is now impossible to hide, even when wrapped up in Gilgamesh's spare clothes.

But healing is what Ardyn _does,_ and the babe doesn't seem to be distressed. She's treated enough pregnant women to know what that feels like, what it looks like. No: the child seems to like healing too.

"I'm pregnant, not decrepit," she warned him, keen golden eyes watching the last of the dark poison in his veins seep into hers, like a leech. It disperses a bit and fades when it reaches her elbow, but she can still feel it, warm like an infection in her blood. That'll pass. Hopefully sooner rather than later; _pregnant, not decrepit_ didn't mean she wasn't cold and moody and sore all the time. "Go on. Get some water and some rest and you should be good as new."

The man smiled at her, delighted and alive and steadier on his feet than he had been before, and he left without another word on the subject.

Ardyn can't imagine herself as a parent, but the title is looming closer with each passing day and she dreads it, in a way. In the dark of the night when the moon is full, the feet her little one kick with don't... seem quite right. Even Gilgamesh has been looking concerned about it.

 

 

Somehow word reaches outward to people who had no business knowing about it. She's heard rumors of Izunia talking and spreading rumors, but Ardyn's been busy: the Starscourge grows and spreads quicker with every month that passes, and she's just one person. Keeping up with it would be difficult even if she weren't seven months pregnant; Gilgamesh and the others have been pushing her to rest, to slow down, but all she can think are that her people are dying and she _must--_

Izunia steps into the healer's tent while she's drawing the Scourge from an still-born infant not three minutes old. She can save her, she thinks. She's done it before, but never on one so young, not one who was infected in the mother's womb, but the healing had started before the labor, and the woman yet lives. Ardyn _can_ save them both. She just needs a little more time--

Izunia barks out orders that she be seized, and the babe is ripped from her hands as the woman screams in alarm at the sudden arrival of soldiers. The whole thing is dizzying and too fast, she doesn't process enough of it to _remember_ it, but she puts the pieces together when she wakes up again.

When she wakes up again.

(She wakes up to contractions, muscles seizing, screaming at her. A number of midwives and gentlemen training for the position surround her. Her wrists are bound by ropes and she doesn't recognize the cloth of the dress she wears, her thighs and the bed beneath her stained a dark scarlet. One of the trainees is chanting in her ear, _push, push, push,_ and there are fingers on her belly, trying to tease the babe into position, but something's wrong--)

 

She wakes up in a cell made of stone, a window hewn high in the sky, feeling strangely empty, devoid and bereft of... something. When her fingers flutter down to caress her flat belly, she remembers. She calls out for Gilgamesh, first; he should be here, her Shield, her guardian. But he doesn't answer, and so she calls for Izunia, remembering him clearly, now, rage and loss marrying in her breast, demanding her attention.

(She gets a look at her child as they wipe away Starscourge-black from him. The blood from the umbilical cord is red still, and he's clearly _not_ infected the way of other babes. The infant-down is dark, and his eyes are newborn blue, and both of those will change color with time, the way all baby's do.

She wants to hold him, but she's bound and no one offers her the babe. A midwife cradles him close as she wraps him up, stands-- and then hands _Ardyn's baby_ to Izunia.

"Your son, your Majesty.")

 

Izunia doesn't answer, either. No one does.

 

Ardyn dies in her cell. Of dehydration, of hunger, of grief. Once, from climbing the wall. She dies and dies and dies, and each time she awakes anew.

She doesn't forget her brother's name. She doesn't forget the look on his face when he looked at her, holding _her son_ to his chest while he looked at her, bleeding on a labor-bed, as he sentenced her to isolation and death.

 

 

Two thousand years later, she steps out of the Mother of Pearl with her last Oracle coin in her hand and _stops_ in the face of a boy, a young man, really. His hair is infant-dark and his eyes are newborn blue, and her heart stutters and her mind wars inside itself.

"Who are you?" she's asked, and she can't make her mouth shape the words she wishes to say, two thousand years of grief and rage and plots later. The Gods can't be this cruel. They _can't._

(Of _course_ they can. They _would.)_

 

"Just a woman of no consequence, your highness."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [A Woman of Great Consequence](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13966470) by [Omnibard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omnibard/pseuds/Omnibard)




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